Making Amends
by Obitobito
Summary: Mostly though, making amends had meant visiting the grave of the deceased heroes, standing alone by the stone in the dim of the night and making pitiful excuses. (KakaObi) (His face is revealed next week... meanwhile, angst.)


**Making Amends.**

It was a kind of miracle that Kakashi was still alive and breathing.

For all he knew, his whole life as a Jounin had been one brutally long search for a time, place and a way to make amends.

Sometimes it meant volunteering for life-threatening S-ranked missions and putting himself on the line to save the others. It always meant dedicating his life fully to the protection of the Hidden Leaf. After all, it was the only kind of life that Kakashi would allow himself to lead.

Mostly though, making amends had meant visiting the grave of the deceased heroes, standing alone by the stone in the dim of the night and making pitiful excuses.

Now that the main purpose he had stood by the tomb for was morbidly proved pointless, Kakashi could no longer fulfill his routine of atonement. The tombstone in front of him by his feet meant nothing to him - or if it had a meaning, it stood as a malicious sign of the ridiculing of the verge that separates life from death. In the Ninja World, there seemed to be no respect left for the deceased. That line was now insignificant.

Kakashi had no idea how to pay back for the atrocious fact that he still remained alive, when the cost of his living was another man's life becoming a hellish struggle between the macabre and a vital, soul-consuming vengeance.

Kakashi wasn't sure if Uchiha Obito was truly alive.

When the mask had cracked and revealed the villain's familiar face, something inside Kakashi had shattered into a hundred sharp pieces.

Kakashi was not a very emotional man. All he could tell about a broken heart was it had felt like each of the remaining bits were cutting their way through his pleura, scraping his ribcage with sharp edges, grating on his bones from the inside as if his thorax were a harp tuned up for a dead man's lullaby.  
He had felt so empty. The air was sucked out of him and all that was left was Obito's deadpan voice echoing in every cell of his hollow body.

Kakashi didn't really know much about heartbreaks.

When they had stood amidst the rubble in that silent moment of grim realisation, Kakashi had witnessed Obito's chest rise and fall like a chest of a real living man, but the oxygen that entered those lungs was completely marred in exhalation, poisoned with utterly dark revenge. That revenge was the force that jolted Obito's heart into beating; it was the power that made his gaze drill into Kakashi's own widened pupils with throbbing, merciless wrath.

The worst part was that Kakashi had yielded to it.

How dire. Yet there was nothing that could've been done about it.

A ninja who felt he deserved his enemy's rage had slim chances in winning the battle. Kakashi couldn't have beaten Obito in this combat. Every bit of his hyperventilating being had fought against even looking into the enemy's face. It was like - no, it was _literally_ looking directly into his own eye and seeing incorrigible remorse glaring back.

Then the villain had once again fleed from the spot, sucked into that invincible eye of his, obviously not quite prepared to take part in a conclusive battle yet. Uchiha Obito had disappeared into a swirl of overlapping times and worlds with an effortless movement of an arm, vanished from the present world right under Kakashi's helplessly palarysed stare.

He had been so fucking afraid.  
_So ridiculously afraid._

Kakashi had never felt fear in a battle. He was never scared of the probable death he had yet managed to avoid, nor did he fear seeing his comrades die during missions… all those faceless shinobis with their mimicking ANBU masks and hidden identities, lined up for one collective cause. In the end, all that mattered was the cause. Lives were continuously sacrificed for maintaining balance in the Ninja World. Kakashi had accepted death as something steady and inevitable, the only sure conclusion left to rely on.

Everybody went. Killed. _Gone._

It couldn't be helped, no matter how much he tried to stop it from happening around him. And he did try, yes, he tried to save them with everything he had, though he did not have much. All he had was his own life, which he felt not worthy of.

Kakashi accepted death. It was life that he did not accept: the life he had been given with such a great cost, a life he did not deserve. He didn't accept the life that was prolonged so horribly, distastefully far that instead of truly living, Obito was obliged to draw his vitality from the darkness of eternal retribution.

If Kakashi could change the course of things, he would have been the one throwing Obito to the side, saving him from the falling rocks. He would have been the one getting crushed and saying the soothing words before his final breath. Not only for the sake of his friend but for his own too, to avoid the never-ending repentance. To be released from this feeling that dragged him to Obito's grave every day, this suffering that had him crying out useless apologies to a lifeless piece of carved stone night after night.

Selfish as he was, Kakashi would gladly have preferred death to this - whatever this was.

However, nothing could be done. _What has happened has happened._

Uchiha Obito died in the battle of Kannabi Bridge.  
That was when Obito should have died. Not now, not after sixteen years, not by the hands of an old friend.

_Not as a villain._

Death was not what Kakashi preferred, but it was better to accept the ending of things than to let them continue by force, only to witness all slowly and painfully transmuting into a distorted mutilation of what used to be.

Tthe once kindest boy was raised to a man by sheer torment. There was no way to bring him back.

As Kakashi had studied the now grown male standing opposite him across the battlefield, Obito had seemed a stranger to him: a dangerous avenger now almost the same height as himself, dark blue fabric of his clothing falling loosely over the slightly narrow, lean shoulders. A low, profound voice with emotionless clarity and passive-aggressive tone. The confident posture of his slender frame, and the pale skin of his face that was deeply scarred from jawline over to the cheekbone.

Kakashi recalled the roundness of those cheekbones when the young boy's face had lit up with a playful smirk. Oh, did he remember the genuine joy in that smile. He hadn't forgotten the bright sound of Obito's laughter, nor could he shed the image of those raven black eyes. The mixed look of insecurity, gratitude and submissiveness in them when Kakashi had once again come to shield Obito from an enemy's attack.

Obito had never been one capable of hiding his feelings. Kakashi's senses were sharp as a dagger and his face carved from marble.

But back then Kakashi had lied to himself. He hadn't admitted that he treated Obito as someone who was in need of his protection. It was just how things were. Obito never asked for it, but the tears that he ashamedly tried to hide behind his goggles were enough of a plea to set Kakashi in a full guardian mode.  
_It's only until the Elite Crybaby awakens his Sharingan and stands up for himself,_ Kakashi had assured in his mind and grunted under his breath. He'd never thought any of it as a debt that Obito should somehow compensate for. It all had come naturally to him - as naturally as putting the weaker kid down and calling him names when he had felt like it, by the means of his own superiority.

He was not going to bring that boy alive now. That sweet little boy had grown to be a man with powers too great to be handled only with the potency of anger. To overcome such powers one needed something stronger than rage.

That man had to be stopped. His agony had to be brought to an end.

Kakashi could use words to ease the hopelessness that had overcome Obito's soul. He could talk about what might have been and what could be, but all those things were merely behind an endless labyrinth of desperation. He knew better than to make Obito go through the torment of paying for his sins. Kakashi, if one, felt in his barest essence what it was like to never quite be able to attain peace from remorse.

Remorse had been carved into the marrow of his young bones. Misery was carved into Obito's. They both were to blame for each other's misfortune - but then again, no other was to blame than the severe imbalance of life and death, neither of which had been carried out for them the rightful way.  
What had to be done was to grab the death with one's own hands and carry out the rest of it until all was rightly finished.

For Kakashi, Obito died a hero. He was forever to be mourned and remembered as the boy who sacrificed himself to save his friends.

As for himself, the one saved by the hero, there was no choice.

Kakashi deserved the fury that was burning in Obito's eyes. He would embrace all of it, it belonged to him. He would do what had to be done.

To save Obito, he had to kill him.

* * *

The tombstone was coloured in warm shades as the sun was setting, scattering its beams over the solitary man standing in the silence of the graveyard. The evening light reflected from the orange surface of the small eye-protectors that had been laid delicately on the ground by the stone.

"This is the last pitiful excuse I'm going to make." The man sighed deeply, reached out his hand and brushed a yellow autumn leaf off the tomb with a gentle, caressing gesture. "I'm sorry, Obito."

The leaf flew, got caught by the wind and shuddered slightly, wavering in the air for a moment before slowly falling to the grass near the man's feet.

"I guess you still need me to save you."

_fin_


End file.
